The Wizard And The Dragon (30 page)

We
walked forward and stopped with our feet on the edge of burnt earth. I could
see where the road continued on the other side. I looked to my right and I
could see where the fire had stopped in that direction: crumbling, black stumps
of trees and relatively intact ones behind it. I turned to my left and I could
not see where the forest resumed. The damage was like an infected wound,
scabbed over and stretching toward the horizon.

“I
can see why no one would travel the road,” I said without turning to Kate.

“Most
would turn back from this,” she agreed. “Brave ones would turn right here and
walk deep into the trees. They would cut around this entire area and walk for
hours before going back to the road. Fools would cut straight across to the
other side.”

“And
I am going left. Where I have no trees to hide under. Walking straight to the
source of the fire.”

“And
what does that make you?”

I
turned back to her and found her staring directly at me.

‘Tower,”
she said. “We can turn around. I can take you to a city where they will shower
you in gold for just a fraction of the magic you can show. I do not believe you
taught yourself. Would your teacher want you to throw your life away like
this?”

I
smiled despite not being able to answer her. I wondered if my Tower had the
same journey coming to the dragon as I had, knowing things are different for
each of us. Had he known he was walking to his death or did he have a glimmer
of hope that he would be the first to succeed, just like I did now? I thought
of the next Tower, the boy I had left behind, and wondered if I would want him
to do what I was about to do.

“I’ll
wait here then,” she said after I didn’t fill the silence. “I’ll give you until
the morning to change your mind and come back.”

I
nodded at her. Her mouth was a tight line and her eyebrows were furrowed
severely. When she spoke it was as though her lips barely parted at all.

“I’m
not a coward for not following you. It’s not cowardice to not follow you over
the cliff you insist on jumping over.”

It
was surreal to hear her consider herself anything close to cowardly. Without my
magic I would not have dared to sneak into a camp of half a dozen trolls, never
mind taking them on with a short sword and a knife. I nodded at her a second
time and then dropped my half of her packs and bags at her feet. I stepped away
and off the road, my boots pressing down into the soft layer of ash that
covered the ground.

I
stopped and looked back when I was almost out of her sight. She looked like she
was shaking her head. She thought I had no idea what I was doing and, for all
my battles in the underground, all the practice and weaving of fire and
lightning, she was right. I took Candle out of my pocket and put him on my
shoulder. We walked through the ash together. The two of us alone again.

The ash was coarse
as I walked through it. I had to tuck my trouser legs into my boots as I
approached the deeper parts. It was unevenly spread even along the path of the
dragon’s destruction. In parts it was shallow and had been blown away by the
wind. In others it had been swept together around the remains of tree trunks.

I
found huge patches where the ash had been crushed into the ground. The dirt
below it was firmer and solid there. I wondered if the dragon slept in
different places along this path or if it had burned its way through more of
the forest as time went on. I didn’t know if I was going to find the dragon
sleeping or have him swoop down at me from the air. I kept myself alert and
connected to the magic in the harness as I walked on.

Candle
alternated which shoulder he sat on as we walked. He seemed curious about the
ash. He was used to sitting in piles of it or collecting soot on his core after
sleeping over a wick. He was excited by what we were surrounded by but
unwilling to jump down onto his feet. I wondered if he was able to tell what
kind of fire caused the destruction around us. Maybe he could feel a danger
from it that I could not.

It
was early evening when we reached the river. It had long since turned west and
left the north road we followed and we had walked far enough to meet it again.
The water was a surreal break in the black streak, a clear rush of water and
then more of the charred earth on the other side. The forest was intact along
the river and we waded through it at the most shallow point we could find.
Candle hissed at the water even as I held him above it.

We
neared the dragon soon after the river was behind us. There was no roar or
screeching. Nothing so fierce or deafening as the cries of a krogoth in the
underground. The dragon was sleeping fearlessly at the end of the wound it had
burned across the forest. It didn’t need to worry or warn anything away with a
howl. The mere sight of it was enough to send anything scurrying away.

I
stood and felt my heart in my chest, like I had throughout so many fights
before. Those times I would start to feel it in the middle of the fight, part
way through channeling energy to barely scrape through and survive. The dragon
was slumbering in front of me and didn’t even know I was there, and already my
heart was racing.

Candle
was unmoving on my shoulder. We had spent so many nights in the tower preparing
for a fight like this. I still don’t know if he knew then that it was leading
up to this battle. I stepped forward and he slid down my back and stood next to
me. I took out my pouch of gemstones and scattered them on the ground. I
reached out with my focus and could feel them, even if they were lost to my
eyes amongst the ash. The dragon stirred as I gathered my focus but did not
wake up.

The
sky was darkening but it was still too bright and calm for such a monster to be
in front of me. I reached for the dagger at my back and slid it out of the
harness. I could feel my connection to both sources of their power and the
pockets of gemstones out before me. I had done all that I could to prepare and
I still felt like a child, groping its toy weapon against the monster. The
dagger felt too small in my hand, like I was about to try to cut down a tree
with a butter knife.

I
took a breath and focused energy through my body. Fire sprang to life along my
arms and shoulders, tethered between my hands, my dagger, and the harness.
Candle flared up on the ground beside me, swelling to double his usual size as
he tapped into the energy in his core. I gathered my magical focus and lunged
out with it at the dragon, ready to feed the magic I held through that focus
point.

The
dragon woke up instantly. My focus collided with something I had never felt
before. It roared out of anger, furious that it had been woken up and I felt my
focus be swatted away from it as if it were a bothersome fly. This wasn’t a
resistance to magic I was feeling, this was like gathering around another
wizard. Suddenly I knew I had misunderstood what I had read about a dragon
channeling fire instead of breathing it. It had a focus of its own, far
stronger and more powerful than mine, able to divert my channel as though they
were nothing.

The
beast slouched forward and stretched its legs and wings. It was even larger
than I remembered. I didn’t even know how that was possible after over a decade
of nightmares embellishing its size and strength. I thought of all the times I
had been in the underground and wondered if the dragon would have even been
able to fit into most of the chambers down there.

It
looked directly at me and turned its head, considering me for a moment as the
flames began to gather around its wings. It was a nightmare come to life and I
frantically battered my focus against the impenetrable wall of its magic. I
could feel the staggering force of the power beneath its scales, as if the
monster itself was made entirely out of sollite, while I clung to the tiny
pieces that I thought were filled with powerful magic.

The
fire gathered at its mouth into a ball of flames and it was shot toward me. I
reacted instinctively and brought the gems up from the ash. Those, at least, I
could gather around outside of the dragon. I sprang three of them into the air
and spread them into barriers, blocking the ball of fire. It crashed through
the first two and they shattered like glass. The third deflected the fire and
it fell harmlessly to the ground. It burst open like a droplet of water,
splashing fire among the ash.

The
dragon tilted its head the other way now. It regarded me like it had the old
wizard in my village. I wasn’t even a threat to it. More of a curiosity. I
gathered the fire again around my arms and set my focus as close to the
dragon’s defenses as I could. I led with the dagger and the fire spewed forth
from its tip, swirling into a raging river of flames. It reached my focus and I
pushed it on blindly, not able to aim it precisely at the dragon’s head but
compelling it forward as strong as I could channel.

The
monster lifted its head and I saw my fire being swept up around its body. My own
magic was plucked so easily out of the air and now swirled around the dragon’s
wings as if it had been its all along. It added its own power to the fire and
its scales began to glow with the strain of heat so close to it. My own fire
and the dragon’s met at the end of its snout and streamed toward me.

I
flailed wildly for the gems and they flew at the fire. They snapped out into
barriers that I put all of the magic in the harness behind. The energy I had
channeled with the trolls had nowhere to go, but this time it left my body and
was barely enough to hold the gemstone shields together as the torrents of fire
slammed into them.

I
don’t know when I started to scream. The barriers were broken and swept away
near the end and it was the energy I channeled alone that fought back against
the flames. When they finally stopped I fell forward from the force I had been
pressing against. I landed face first into the ash and craned my head up to the
dragon. Its eyes were narrowed as if it was confused with what it was seeing.

The
gems around me were gone. The harness was completely drained of power. I still
held the dagger in my hand. Candle was a few meters to my right. He had grown
in size from the fire around him but he was still rigid in place. I looked at
him as the ground began to shake. The dragon was walking toward me and each
step sent a shock wave of force through the ground.

I
decided I wouldn’t die on my belly with my head down. I got to my feet as it
drew closer. Each of one of its steps was easily twenty of mine but I stood
against them.

There
was still so much magic in the dagger and I threw it against the monster,
determined to put up a fight even as it came close enough to eat me. I threw
lightning recklessly out in front of me. The bolts of energy punched through
the air and bounced off the dragon’s scales. It was its magic, catching and
diverting even the instant arcs of lightning as easily as it did to my fire.

Its
head was above me when it stopped. Still I poured my energy at it. The
lightning cascaded down my arms, crisscrossing over my flesh like a second skin
and then spewing over the dragon’s head, uselessly parting around its flesh and
shooting off into the sky above it. It did nothing and the dragon was close
enough that I could feel its breath.

I
was close enough that I couldn’t see the fire begin to flicker around its
wings. I could feel it with my magic and sensed that it was more energy that it
had spent in either of its last attacks. I was worth that at least, I thought,
and I spread my arms open to the fire that I could see creeping along its neck
and racing to coalesce at its mouth. This was how Tower died. I finally had my
answer as I stood there ready for the flames. Tower had come here alone and had
been burned into the ashes that were all around me. I finally had my answer.

The
dragon roared at the strain of the magic it was wielding down toward me and I
looked up at my death. I saw something move as the fire plummeted down at me.
It moved in front of me and then the fire stopped, swirling in place between me
and the dragon and gaining size and strength and then I realized that I wasn’t
Tower and that I wasn’t alone.

Candle
was between us and all of the dragon’s fire and magic that it had summoned down
to incinerate me was now being caught by him. The monster had invested too
greatly into the attack. It had committed too much and couldn’t stop the
scorching blaze that was now being gathered in front of its head.

My
familiar grew as the magic flooded into him. His body of fire exponentially
grew until I could barely see the dragon behind him. He was a raging inferno of
energy and fire, burning hot and bright between us. The sollite core in the
center of him was brightest of all, searing its image into my eyes as if I was
staring directly into the sun. It hurt to look at but I couldn’t take my eyes
from him.

The
dragon roared as the last of its magic left it and Candle swarmed up around its
head. The monster was the one screaming now as its fire was turned back on it,
melting the flesh beneath its scales and burst them open. Its eyes were pink
and cooked in seconds but still Candle fought on, his fire consuming
everything. The sounds of his crackling fire were joined by a low whine and I
couldn’t tell if it came from him or the dragon. It sounded like something was
dying.

The
fire kept burning and the dragon reared its head back, slashing futilely
through the flames around its head with its front claws. Candle’s core grew
brighter as the assault went on, burning the dragon the most wherever it passed.
It was blind and being boiled alive and it screamed in agony.

There
was a pause before it happened. The dragon slumped down forward and I saw
Candle’s core go still in front of its face. The whine grew louder and I knew
suddenly that it was from him, not the monster. His core went dark for the
briefest moment and then burst open in an explosion of light and force that
knocked me back away from it.

Candle’s
core shattered. The shards blasted from the dragon’s head. Some were embedded
in its exposed, roasted flesh and others I could feel scattered in the ash
around us. I knew then that he was gone and it wasn’t sadness or loss that I
felt but anger. The same rage that had been festering in me for so many years
that the dragon was still alive and my family wasn’t. That the dragon was still
alive and Tower wasn’t. That the dragon was still alive and Candle wasn’t.

I
surged forward and used the energy in my own body this time. I ran as I
gathered around the dagger and shot it out of my hand and into the smoldering
remains of the dragon’s eye. The blade pierced into it cleanly and the monster
thrashed to life from the pain of it. It raised its head and flames once again,
recklessly this time, rushed over its body.

The
dagger was the connection I needed. My focus was linked to it already and I was
faster. Candle had done his work well and the lightning I formed came from both
me and the dagger embedded in the dragon’s flesh. The power of them linked and
I joined my hands together and released all that I had left into that attack.

The
lightning collected between us, balling in the air before it was driven into
the dragon’s skull. The dagger was emptied through that link in the loudest,
deepest boom of an explosion I had ever heard. Years worth of collecting gems
unleashed directly into the dragon’s body. It screamed one final time, an
inhuman sound that echoed throughout the forest around us, and then slumped
down into the bed of ash it had made for itself.

The
dagger twitched as it still sent jolts into the corpse. I left it and fell to
my knees. Around me I could feel the energy in the shards of Candle’s acorn
fade away. I slumped onto the ground and wept.

Kate
found me. I don’t know how long I was alone. She said something about hearing
the dragon die and came expecting me to be dead too. I can’t remember exactly
what she did or said to me. I don’t remember much about that night.

She
set up a camp near the dragon’s corpse. I stayed in place throughout the night
and don’t remember moving until morning. Kate brought me water and went to the
dragon’s remains without a word. I slowly moved around the field and collected
as many of Candle’s pieces as I could find. I knew that I couldn’t fix him but
I wanted keep them regardless. Kate helped me dig out the shards that had been
plunged into the dragon’s flesh.

We
stayed there for days. I kept my word and helped Kate harvest the dragon,
although I took no pleasure in it. She emptied out all of the other jars she
had filled, even the troll’s liver that she had been so pleased about. The
dragon parts were another class of treasure entirely to her. She crammed as
many teeth, scales, and claws as she could into the few bags that she had. She
carved pieces of the dragon’s liver and heart and put them into jars, since they
were too big to be put in whole. The heart alone was big enough that we both
could have climbed into it.